Sunday 1 November 2020

Digging a trench


 Not what I was expecting to do last Sunday. I got a phone call from my step-granddaughter - she needed some 'help' with a half term history project on WW1. The brief was to build a trench in a shoebox.  Unfortunately she didn't mention the 'compulsory and optional' items so there was a lot of scrambling. 

The prototype research was a few photos of mainly French trenches - I'm far from expert in these things so whether these were French trenches or just trenches in France I couldn't say. Anyway I just copied  as best I could with a certain amount of 'help'. The scale is about 10mm-1' because it was easier and to her mother's amazement the whole thing just cost time and about 20p. Draw from that what you will.

Materials used are: Adidas shoebox, Amazon box card for the carcass, masking tape as the base groundwork poster paint and PVA to seal it. A bundle of coffee stirrers, corrugated paper from a biscuit wrapper, DAS sandbags, ground up chalk and soil from the garden dried in the microwave.  Paint and a wisp of static grass. 

Got to be worth an A*

6 comments:

  1. Ah, you've been drawn in too. Isn't it fun. I haven't been called on to model a trench though. Yet. Yours is definitely worth an A+ and will probably be seized by the school for future use.

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  2. I've had to help build some scenes too, the trees from Joshua's forest in a shoebox came in useful when he built a layout. Mind you I did once build a layout in a shoebox, and that wasn't a school project!

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  3. Real MODELLING. Looks great.

    Andrew K

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  4. Ha. ha. Yes, I get this with my youngest son (9) quite a lot. Just before lockdown he (I) made a Sutton Hoo style Saxon helmet. Previous to that we've (I've) built Castles and rainforests. Funny thing is, i don't recall my parents doing this sort of thing for me when I was his age, pretty sure I just got on with it myself.

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    1. I must admit when I was school we got to do this sort of thing in lessons, not as homework, and with a common pool of materials to build from. I guess schools no longer have time for that approach.

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  5. Definitely A* I'd have said...especially now I've had a look at it on a bigger screen!

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